Brunel Museum
⭐ Highligts
Grand Entrance Hall (Tunnel Shaft)
Where London learned to go under waterA vast cylindrical void lowered the tunnellers—today it’s echo and brick telling the story.
📍 Rotherhithe shaft, down the stairs
Shield & Digging
Prototype for modern tunnel-boring machinesBrunel’s iron ‘shield’ divided labour and protected workers—an idea now scaled to TBMs that chew continents.
📍 Main gallery displays
The Tunnel as Attraction
Engineering turned into nightlifeBefore trains, Victorians paid to stroll beneath the Thames among stalls and buskers.
📍 Exhibition film & ephemera
Brunel & Son
Genius as apprenticeshipIsambard Kingdom Brunel began here, surviving a tunnel flood; his later bridges and ships start to make new sense.
📍 Curator talk times vary
Opening Hours
🤓 Fun Facts
The Thames Tunnel opened in 1843 as a pedestrian promenade with shops—trains only arrived decades later.
A sudden inrush of the Thames nearly drowned 19-year-old Isambard Kingdom Brunel; he wrote about hearing the river before he saw it.
Brunel’s ‘shield’ is the ancestor of modern TBMs—today’s machines still copy its segmented, cell-by-cell protection.
